from the bad-airline!--bad! dept

As the saying goes, there are many ways to skin a Streisand effect. Wait, no, that's not right, but the point is that attempts at silencing speech resulting in an explosion of that speech are quite varied. From railing against parody Twitter accounts, to attempts to silence negative online reviews, to professional sports leagues trying to keep documentaries from going live, it seems we all have something to learn from Senorita Streisand and her icy wrath.

But few such lessons include puppies, such as this one that reader IAsimov alerts us to, in which United Airlines nearly killed an owner's beloved dog and agreed to pay her vet bills, but only if she signed a non-disclosure agreement. Janet Sinclair brought her pets, Sedona the greyhound and Alika the cat, on a cross-country trip using UA's "PetSafe" program, which makes several promises about how the animals will be treated and what type of conditions they'll be exposed to. It would appear, to put it mildly, that the airline failed to keep their promises.

But, according to Sinclair, her pets were not safe. In fact, she says, the comfort stop nearly killed them. As she sat in her window seat looking out onto the tarmac of George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Sinclair says she saw a cargo employee kick Sedona’s crate six times to shove it under the shade of the plane’s wing instead of gently moving it there.

Urged by a fellow passenger, Sinclair began documenting what was happening to her animals. The video she recorded periodically shows her pets left outside, not in a temperature-controlled vehicle. According to the National Weather Service, the high in Houston that day was 94 degrees. When they touched down in Boston, Sinclair said her dog was barely alive.

"Sedona’s entire crate was filled with blood, feces, urine," Sinclair said. "Sedona was in full heat stroke. All of the blankets were filled with blood. She was urinating and defecating blood. She was dying, literally, right in front of me."

Sedona, fortunately, did not die, and the dog was taken to a vet, who was able to bring the dog back to health. The bill for the vet's work was $2,700, for three days in intensive care to treat heat stroke. Her vet was quite clear in stating that the condition of the dog was not due to any preexisting conditions, despite what United Airlines originally claimed, and was solely the result of the dog's treatment during the flight. The airline offered to pay the bill...but only if Sinclair agreed not to tell anyone what good dog-killers they are. Sinclair declined.

"The only reason I’m doing this interview is because I didn’t sign that, and I won’t sign it," she said, referring to the nondisclosure agreement. "I still want to be reimbursed," she said. "But I’m not going to be quiet."

And now the story is going viral, because the combination of a massive company behaving this way and the inclusion of a dog suffering horrible conditions is the kind of thing internet outrage was made for. My guess? You will still have turkey leftovers in your fridge when UA agrees to pay the vet bill without an NDA. Too bad the damage will have already been done.